SoA 2 "OS" is released. It is far from perfect, but it should tide you guys over till we can get 0.4e out the door.

Some things you need to know about the original sins release.

1) There is no dynamic ship movement. Original sins doesnt support it. That is one of the reasons why we switched to Entrenchment in the first place. I also left most of the original sins ships abilitys in place. though i did swap some around to better suit a ship. I didnt want to put too much time into this.

2) It is a complete rebuild of 0.03c using the method i did to rebuild 0.4e. Which means no vanilla factions are in the mod. It also means that it is incomplete. Though it is much furthur along than 0.03c ever was. I used some 0.4e components in the mod (like the UI changes, and ship stats). It does have working cloaking devices. All Romulan combat ships have them. Only a few Klingon ships do. The bad thing is that you cant "group cloak". You have to select ships individually to use the ability. I dont know how to make it to where you can "fleet cloak".

3) The balancing is still kind of "iffy". I used the 0.4e stats, but those stats took into account dynamic movement. Which the OS build does not have. It is still fun to play despite this.

4) There is a "improvised" research tree for each faction. It is pretty much vanilla sins, and i placed the most appropriate trek ship in a vanilla sins roletype the closely suited it. So we shouldnt have stalled AI's. In my tests the AI performed just as well as vanilla sins, but you may want to play hard AI, and large fleet capacity.

5) I left the pirates alone, and the defenders are Klingon since they are replaced TECH. You need fodder to build levels anyway I was gonna use Borg for the pirates, but i didnt want to put too much time into this. Remember this is a courtesy. We need to focus on Entrenchment.

6) The Dominion function just fine, but they have no unit voices, and they share music with the feds. The UI is not finished so some buttons for them dont show up (but you can still press them). I didnt intend anyone to play as the dominion just yet. So use the Dominion as an AI opponent for now. If you do play as the Dominion understand that they arent finished yet.

There are some dev.exe errors that i just cant get rid of, but they are not game crashers. i listed what they were in the readme. I tested this thing thrice over and it works fine for me. Dont post about any bugs in the OS version, because we need to focus all of our resources on Entrenchment. Use the OS version at your own risk. Though if it plays like on my machines there shouldnt be any risk.

Anyways hope this will satisfy you guys until we can get 0.4e done barring any more disaterous patches.

There is one "issue" that I have wanted to bring up to you for a long time. This issue concerns the music you have for the feds in the game. I believe that the music plays a very impornant role in making this a Star Trek game. Throughout my use of the mod, however, I have never heard the Star Trek: The Original Series theme. Due to the fact that this song is the most recognizable star trek song, and my favorite, I believe it should be added in. You may also want to add the songs from the credits of the Star Trek films. A combination of all of these songs would, in my opinion, create a better experience.

It is in there belive it or not. Check out the music files and you will find a few TOS, and some TNG fanfare songs in there. I didnt want to go "overboard" with it because i didnt want the feds to be so "sugar coated" that you go into a diabetic shock the way all the series made them out to be. The feds may live in paradise on earth, but this war is far from earth. That is what i liked about DS-9 was that they didnt make the feds out to be "perfect" good guys.

The sins music system got all screwed up since entrenchment. We have music in the mod that wont play despite it filling the sins theme it is set for. We have "happy" music playing during battles :/ Thats one thing i am gonna re-do in 0.4e (once i figure it all out). The game music, and sound music files need to be rebuilt, and all original sins stuff needs to be removed.

This is also one of the reasons why i left everything in text format. Instead of converting it back to binary. So that if there is something you dont like you can simply change it. Play around with it, and experiment. The only thing i ask is to keep any changes you make for your own personal use unless it is a dev.exe bug fix.

i wanted to say great job on both mods for this game love them. but my only thing is that i have a left, right, center, and 2 rear speakers for my computer. my speakers work just fine. but when i play this mod and when the ships are fighting eachother the sound effects for the wepons and explosions only come out of my front left speaker, and i dont know why. the music and voices along with every thing els works just fine and come out of all my speakers. any help.

ant77man, my guess is that the sound effects were recorded in stereo, but sins wants mono sound, so stereo sound only uses the left channel where as mono uses both left AND right with the same sound, and smaller files at the same bitrate

TBH i have no clue why your sound is messed up, because the weapon sounds work fine for me in stereo. On several different systems. Are your sound drivers correct, and up to date?

The only sound issue i encountered was that the fed phasers fired so fast that the sound didnt have time to take effect. So i shortened the sound effect. That is the only weapon sound i messed with in this build of the mod. The rest have been unchanged since 0.01

I played a game last night, with me as the Federation allied to a Klingon and a Romulan, vs 3 Dominion AI's, all on Normal/Random difficulty. It seemed to me that it took ages to expand and I'm just wondering if this is due to the difficulty setting I put the AIs on or if it's the strength of the non-aligned planetary defenders?

Thanks for putting up the vanilla version for the mod. It's awesome! I'm excited for the full entrenchment version, but very satisfied and greatful for all the work that you and your team have put into it. This mod is a must have addition to sins of a solar empire. You guys rock!

There could be two reasons why the AI is being sluggish (3 if you count the defenders). One is that all but one elite unit needs research to build. The AI may be pushing the pre-reqs to get another elite built. I left one elite unit free (minus fleet cap), and as a colonizer so that the AI wouldnt stall out.

Two would be the fleet cap itself. I left the fleet cap default sins, but used modded fleet cap usage on the ships. Some of it is pretty high. I didnt make those stats, but they are there for a reason, and they are based on that ships crew IIRC. Though i dont understand why the B'rel is higher than the d-7. Unless its firepower was counted as well. Darkshimmer was the balancing guru, and i used his stats. They worked out very well in the entrenchment version. Use highest fleet capacity, and the hardest aggressive AI when you play. That should give you, and all of the AI opponents 1 elite plus at least 5 regular units. Plus it may make the AI expand a little faster. It is obvious this is still an issue.

The defenders can be tough. Especially if Vorchas are with them. Most of the time i seen the AI send its elite with a few light frig roletypes in, and that would do the trick. I also seen it just send in one, or 2 galors which get pasted almost on sight. Which is why i put "why send perfectly good jem hadar when you can send a cardassian on a suicide mission" in the galors build info card. Even though its in the light frig slot it is a tough ship, but a solo ship cant handle a fight with more than 2 klingons. Unless its 2 d-4's. Its about an even match with the d-10/d-11, and it will paste a d-7. However 2 d-7s will defeat a galor. A keldon by itself can handle most defenders unless the planet is heavily defended (With Vorchas).

If i had more time to work with this i wouldnt have Klingons as defenders, but since they share with tech, and i am very pressed for time i had no choice. If i used pirates then the defenders would be too easy. Plus i didnt want to screw around with the pirates just yet because weve had crash issues before with them.

Just play the hardest agressive AI, and max fleet cap. 9 of 10 times it should surprise you.

Since there was all this talk about sound... previous.... I brought this up way earlier in the game development.. but I HATE the way the fusion beams on the Cadassian ships sound... I don't think those sounds accurate at all.... I am not sure where that sound came from but I know they never sounded like that.... Birth of Fedations game had the right sounds for it ... maybe since it's openware now you can snag the sounds from that for cardassian beam weapons... Everything else is spot on though sound wise.... I will have to try this none entrenchment version reading all these posts about it has gotten me excited

Lol, who cares about the damage their ships do. Borg>all. If you can't beat them, then assimilate them and then use their own stuff against them.

Anyway, back on topic, Major have you had a chance to test out that new manifest? I'll pm you later with the specifics after more testing, not sure if I screwed that one up or not based on the last error.

I would have if you left your sync on long enough for me to download it I got the placeholder awaiting sync file for it, and thats it.

Dont even think about mixing Star Wars in with this. Star Wars is a totally different deal. Its stats, and trek stats dont match up because they are two different genres. With two different concepts, and two different techs. I like trek, SW, B5, Stargate etc, etc., but not all mixed together in one package. Plus mixing genres like that is fuel for flame wars. Which i wont tolorate.

I need to know about the balancing in the OS version if its ok, or not. I used shimmers, stats but they took into account dynamic movement. Plus i dont like the fact that ships turn broadsides when its DPS is higher on its side firing weapons.

No this mod is not compatible with any other mods except for the Volumetric Explosions mod. Even then you will have to manually add to the manifests for the Entrenchment version

Dont even think about mixing Star Wars in with this. Star Wars is a totally different deal. Its stats, and trek stats dont match up because they are two different genres. With two different concepts, and two different techs. I like trek, SW, B5, Stargate etc, etc., but not all mixed together in one package.